Overrun Page 5

  Deanna didn't look in his direction. Biting her nails, she walked past his car and stared absently down the street. Tears dropped from her eyes and made a soft hiss when they hit the scorched pavement.

  "How can you expect me to sit and watch my children die?" he asked lowering his voice slightly. "They might not even be far enough along where their systems can't be healed. I can take them back and give them much longer lives than what they can expect to have out here. Among all this death."

  "Among all this death?" she said walking to him and pulling him towards the street. He reluctantly let her take his hand and slowly followed.

  "Look at this," she pointed down the street at the rest of the dying neighborhood. "There is death everywhere you look, John. It's called living on the outside. You chose to leave it. To leave us."

  "I left you, Deanna. You gave up. Not on me, but on life on this planet. And if that's what you want to do, that's fine, but your two children haven't given up yet. And I couldn’t stomach the fact that you try to convince them that they should give up too. I had to go back while I felt there still was something I could do."

  Sobs racked Deanna's body, and tears fell in abundance from her face. But Kirken did not stop. He went at her with the fullness of his wrath for all the years Mel and Brandon had already lost because she kept them from living with him on the inside.

  "Do you realize that by letting them come with me, they will live much longer and in less pain? I can't take them unless you let me. Otherwise they would have been there a long time ago."

  Finally regaining control over the sorrow that wracked her body, Deanna was silent. Her eyes were red and her lips still trembled slightly.

  "They're my kids, John," she said shortly. "We go over this every time. They are not your children. They're mine. They choose to be with me. Why can't you be happy with the time I allow you to be with them? Why do you always have to insist on more?"

  "Because," he said walking to stand in front of her. He reached out and gently turned her face until their gazes met. Her skin trembled slightly beneath his touch.

  "Because, you know as well as I do that you have the power to save those kids. You choose not to. That's why we go over this every time. You would rather your own children die than come live with me. And god damn you to Hell for how you choose to act."

  Kirken turned away from her then and walked back towards the house. There was much more he wanted, he needed, to say to her, but he could feel the medication finally seizing its control over his senses. The energy to continue the conversation had vanished.

  "The kids will be home any second," she said timidly after him.

  He walked past his car and left his ex-wife to cry near the street.

  He stood facing the house that he had helped build a few short years ago when he still lived with them on the outside. It was coming apart. Wood was crumbling and falling everywhere. The plastic around the windows oozed in a slick decayed slime, and paint chips littered the yard.

  Like all the houses in the neighborhood and all the houses in the city, it was being beaten into the ground by the sun. Soon it would be time to build a new one before it came down around them. And he knew it was not something Deanna could afford.

  But maybe the time had come where it didn't matter anymore. Mel and Brandon were at the same stage of the radiation sickness as others their age. Like their mother, they were slowly dying.

  What pained Kirken the most was that they both knew it, just like every member of every other family that lived on the outside. They had already come to grips with the death that plagued the outside world unlike Kirken who had not yet been willing to accept any of it.

  He knew he never would.

  Every visit he noticed the subtle changes in their skin and found himself looking for the indigestion, stomach aches and the countless other symptoms of the radiation sickness. He felt like a ghoul every time he scrutinized them for some kind of indication as to when they were going to die. What sickened him worse was that he didn't know if he feared for the end of their lives or something far worse.

  With his children gone, he would have absolutely nothing left. They were the only thing that gave him hope in this world. Following each of the times he spent with them, he could feel that hope becoming weaker and weaker. As if eaten away along with their bodies by the radiation sickness.

  He could see the end in their eyes. The pain and loneliness harbored there haunted his thoughts daily.

  Outwardly, their stoicism and unwillingness to acknowledge this death troubled him more.

  Kirken remembered hugging his son the last time they said goodbye. He had accidentally knocked his baseball cap to the ground with his elbow. A clump of hair twice the size of Kirken's fist fell with it.

  At sixteen, Brandon didn't have much more to lose. The sickness had already stripped most of his skull completely bald.

  Reliving it each night in his dreams, Kirken remembered bending to retrieve the cap and putting it back on his head. Brandon only smiled and pretended not to notice what fell off in Kirken’s hand when he did. He looked away quickly when Kirken opened his hand and let the hair fall to the ground.

  Watching Mel was even harder.

  Only a year younger than Brandon, she even more epitomized the bravery and unwavering desire to live that was necessary to survive in a world slowly dying around her. There was something about her Kirken noticed that many including himself did not have.

  There was a bravery in her gentleness and an unquenchable defiance to accept the bleakness of her fate. It was something Kirken found himself tapping into when he was with her. Sometimes it would last a week or month past his visits. Sometimes it was just enough to help him ward off the demons that haunted his restless sleeps and laughed at his fear.

  Mel hadn't given up like Kirken almost had.

  She believed in a pain that was not constant and in a faith that would keep herself, family and friends alive forever. She made him believe an escape from this world was possible and that one day life would be healed.

  Kirken had gone with her many times to the funerals of her friends and classmates. Each service made him feel even more dead inside, but Mel always appeared unaffected by the sorrow they were there to observe.

  She always seemed to rejoice in the time that she spent with the family and friends that exited her world on a frequent basis. She was not afraid of the unknown. She seemed just happy to be alive in the present.

  Kirken knew how much he loved his stepdaughter and how much of the same she felt back.

  "Dad," Mel came running from the back yard.

  The lawn was a different shade of brown, one not usual for this time of year Kirken noticed. Grass had never grown on the property, only different grades of dirt.

  "What took you so long?" Mel asked when she came closer. "I skipped out of school an hour early just to see you."

  "Hey, baby," Kirken said hugging her.

  Her long blonde hair did not look as healthy as he remembered, and her skin was slightly more pale. But her spirits seemed high. Kirken choked back his tears and tried to smile.

  "Where's your brother, honey?"

  "He's not here," Deanna said to him. She walked briskly towards them from the street. Her anger was evident by her step. "I don't know where he is. But he said if it gets too late to leave without him."

  "Well, I surely doubt he said that," Kirken said casting a tired glare at his ex-wife.

  "Let's go inside, Daddy," Mel said pulling him toward the house.

  Kirken gladly allowed his daughter to lead him inside. He still wasn't quite yet at an equilibrium with his medication, and he eagerly looked forward to the chance to sit down.

  He took a deep breath and walked inside taking slight reprieve from the deadly sun blazing overhead.

  Kirken followed his daughter to the living room and sat down heavily on the sofa. He removed his protective glasses and rubbed his temples trying to make the piercing pain go away.

 
; They waited inside for over an hour for Brandon to return. Mel used the time to relay her last two week's activities in a breathless ramble while her mother fidgeted nervously in the kitchen.

  "You know Dad, I've been dying to take you downtown. There's somewhere I want you to go with me. I have something to show you. Something very important."

  "What are you talking about, sweetheart?" Kirken asked her.

  He felt her exuberance beginning to eat away at the bitterness, anger and frustration that always surrounded him when he was not with her and living his damnable life inside the domes.

  He was excited and interested despite the chemicals racing through his body and starting to make him sick. He avoided looking at his ex-wife sitting in the next room to keep his stomach from acting up any further.

  "C'mon let's go," Mel said grabbing his arms and pulling him to his feet. "The bell's going to ring soon. We don't want to miss them."

  Kirken still had no idea what she was talking about. Judging by the look of her mother in the next room, she seemed unaware as well. At this, the most difficult stage of his recent dose of medication, he didn’t really care.

  He put his black glasses back on, took a deep breath and stepped out again into the blasting heat. He followed Mel to the driveway curious to see what exactly she was talking about.

  “We're going to have to take your car and not the bikes this time," she told him passing quickly by the garage. "The tires on mine melted again. I haven't had time to chip them from the ground."

  As high spirited as she was, this time Kirken sensed some fear behind her sparkling eyes and cheery smile. He imagined the first time she saw the tires. She probably hadn’t been back in the garage since.

  For the first time, Kirken sensed her fright.

  "No problem, Mel," he said. "Just get in."

  Kirken held the door for her. When she was in, he walked around to the front and slid into the driver’s seat. Neither of them looked at Deanna standing at the curb when they pulled away.

  "Head to the center of town," Mel said once they were a little further down the road. Color had risen back to her cheeks, and she looked ready to face the world once again. No matter how difficult a task that might prove to be.

  Kirken turned away from the last of the residential streets. Soon they were traveling down the main highway of Beuford, Washington.

  They drove by the battered remnants of the old apartment complex where they all had once lived. He applied more pressure to the accelerator and tried to pass it without discussion. It was where they had lived before he had decided to return to work in the domes.

  There was nothing much left of the place. Crumbled bricks, brown dirt, and grit covered the sidewalks all around.

  An elderly couple emerged from a decaying door near the front lugging an oversized piece of decayed furniture between them.

  "People still live out here?" Kirken asked incredulously. "How long has it been since that building’s been condemned?"

  "Awhile," Mel answered him evenly. "I wonder where they’ll live.”

  She was silent for a minute. “Maybe they've given up and don't plan to live at all."

  Kirken kept his eyes ahead and forced himself not to react to her change in mood.

  "I know them. At least I knew someone that died in their family," she continued. "They stayed until the roof caved in. It was all they could do when she was finally gone. After the funeral, they must have just given up. Sometimes it's the only thing you can do."

  Kirken had never seen her like this. There was almost no emotion in her voice. It was all starting to happen. It was becoming too much. The pressure of the day's events and the ever increasing levels of radiation exposure were starting to take its toll. He just hoped she would never hate him, even at the end, for spending his life away from her.

  Further down the road, they passed factories, shopping centers, movie theaters, grocery stores and even a miniature golf course. Most were still standing, and some even had some color other than a faded tan or brown.

  Kirken just continued to drive.

  "Take another right," she told him breaking from her own thoughts.

  Kirken maneuvered the car around a crumbling curb and pulled to a stop at the end of the road.

  A giant red building stood ahead. The glare of the thickly shielded windshield partially hid its dilapidated state. Mel looked at it for a minute before opening the door and getting out.

  They had stopped in front of a school and a fenced-off courtyard where dozens of children ran about.

  While Mel watched and Kirken still sat in the driver's seat, they screamed, laughed and threw each other down on the hot pavement. All seemed oblivious to the death that surrounded them and the sad-looking girl that stared longingly from the other side of the fence.

  Kirken followed Mel's gaze to the center of the courtyard.

  “This was where I went, Daddy,” she said. She never looked away from the children, and her voice sounded like it crossed a great distance. “This was my school.”

  “I know, baby,” Kirken said nodding his head slightly and staring through the fence into the yard.

  “I came here one day,” Mel’s speech slowed and became more cold. “I actually come down here a lot.”

  Her voice shook slightly the more she spoke. Kirken put his arm around her. Her body felt frail and weak beneath his touch.

  "She was lying right there when I got to the fence,” she said pointing to a small area in the corner of the courtyard.

  Kirken followed with his eyes to where three fresh flowers lay dying slowly in the sun. Their petals were still white for the moment, but they were slowly withering and curling in from the heat.

  “Who was, sweetheart?”

  "Remember that old couple we just saw?" Mel said to him.

  Kirken nodded remembering the ones they passed in the car.

  "Their granddaughter,” she said sadly. “Though it might have been her or maybe someone just like her. I can't keep them straight anymore. But she was lying right there. No one even noticed.”

  “Noticed what, baby?” Kirken tried to get out. His voice was lost in his throat.

  "No one even noticed," she said again. "She just laid there on her back while the others played in the yard. By the time I climbed the fence her eyes had already burned through."

  Mel slowly got out of the car and walked to the fence grasping it tightly in both fists. Kirken also stepped out and looked down the street away from the schoolyard. A tear fell quickly down his face.

  "Kids don't even notice anymore," she said turning and walking away. “Or they just ignore it, because it’s too frightening a reminder of what’s in store for themselves.”

  Kirken also turned away from the fence. He followed her back to the car struggling hard for something to say. He wished more than anything in the world that he could take that memory away.

  Kirken caught up to her when she reached the curb. She leaned on the hood with both hands. Kirken stood inquisitively at her back.

  "I want to be here when it happens again," Mel said again after a long silence. "I want to be here to tell them it's all right. It’s not something they have to ignore or fear. They can still be friends with each other. Even if they all know that each of them is soon going to die. If friendships stop or are avoided, how is anyone going to survive? They’ve got to know that it’s alright. That it’s alright to still be friends. And it’s alright, when the time comes, to finally let go and die. It’s something they have to know."

  "They know, Mel. I'm sure they know."

  “I just want to take some of the pain away, even if it’s just a little bit,” she said turning around and resting her head on his shoulder. “And let them know it’s going to be alright.”

  Kirken felt a weird lump in the center of his throat. With her face under his chin, he stared over the top of her head. They took one last look at the activity in the courtyard before turning and walking back to the car.

  Kir
ken’s chest hammered, and he felt completely sick. The air seemed unbearably hot, and his thick shoes seared with the heat coming from the pavement. He opened the door, and his daughter climbed in.

  "C'mon Mel let's go see if we can find your brother."

  Kirken walked around to the front of the car and wordlessly climbed in beside her. Mel didn’t say anything when he brought the car into gear and pulled slowly away.

  The school faded behind them into the distance, and the sound of children laughing finally left their ears.

  Kirken tried not to look at the tears slowly sliding down her cheek. He took a deep breath and just continued to drive.

  Chapter 6

  The ride into town was filled with silence. Mel stared out the window clutching her legs between her arms and against her chest.

  Kirken looked ahead completely lost as to what to say. His guilt for ever leaving Beuford and his stepchildren felt like thin tentacles slowly crawling up his back and wrapping around his neck. There was no pressure, only the feeling of their presence.

  It was becoming maddening.

  He pulled out his portable holovid and contacted Deanna. In only too short of an instant he thought, her face appeared. Her eyes were still red from recent tears. The skin beneath them had not yet time to unswell.

  “He's not back yet, John,” she told him timidly. “I don't know where he is."

  "I'm sending you our location. Please make sure to tell him when he comes back. We're going to eat."

  "I will, John," she said her voice tired this time.

  Kirken looked away from the monitor back to the center of the road ahead and reached to hit the disconnect switch.

  "He might not want to see you, John," she spoke again before he could turn it off. "He's had a rough time of it lately. That might be something you're going to have start preparing yourself for."

  "Just tell him where we are."